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Starfleet plot device moratorium

Laura Cynthia Chambers

Vice Admiral
Admiral
After reading this article: https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2023/10/24/five-star-trek-technologies-situations-ignore/

I was wondering what kind of in-universe occurrence would cause Starfleet to meet at a conference and issue a general order prohibiting the usage or possession (as the case may be) of certain technologies, or making contact with the mirror universe, a la General Order 7.

Aside from the "warp travel at high speeds damages space" thing, that is.
 
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I can see why Time Travel tech would be prohibited... however, there is no reason to specifically ban every aspect of this technology.
What COULD be done instead is to introduce hard limits into the technology which will explicitly prohibit time travel itself (either into the past or the future) but allow other functions to be used.

Aspects of the technology could still be used to traverse massive interstellar distances (such as the rift technology used by the timeship Aeon)... but it would be modified so that you can only traverse those distances in space in your own space-time, and not to travel to the past or the far future.
Obviously, you ARE moving through time into the future in real time anyway, so just set the technology to cut a 100 000 Ly's trip to 1 second.
Aka, its basically an artificial wormhole.

In regards to long range transporters... I REALLY hate that this tech wasn't used.
They just keep mentioning it but the Prime Timeline SF never ends up using it - which is utterly moronic.
There are tons of applications you can use even with subspace beaming that's not suitable for organic matter... you can still transport inorganic substances, and initiate construction of automated starbases and outposts in deep space that would otherwise take a longer period of time for SF to move the actual materials to the site and then construct the thing.

TW beaming could be used in the same capacity. Starships would still be used extensively to explore deep space, anomalies, etc... but TW beaming would be ridiculously useful for reshaping how you move people... and especially useful in war time or during conflicts for quick de-escalation.
Just beam a starship and its crew to the intended destination - but the trick is you'll need to do so from a starbase as a starship and its crew are big... and you can only send one ship at a time (at first).

And Trek could show how this would change people's movements throughout the galaxy. You could subspace or TW beam a probe to a new planet to conduct a survey if its too far away to reach relatively quickly at conventional warp, and if its suitable for colonization or terraforming, a ship could be sent to that location to make it habitable, establish basic living conditions, etc.


In regards to the Mirror Universe dopplegangers infiltrating Prime universe and impersonating people by taking over without SF knowing about it... not likely considering that they have more than enough issues in their own universe and they would end up being discovered fairly quickly if they started changing too many things or doing stuff that's right bang out of order for UFP and SF.
 
A kind of permitted time travel would involve a FTL travel in-space that would cause you to back in time...but upon slowing just shy of light speed you go an equal amount forward in time---such that there is no clock difference...no dilation in the end.

It takes you a week ship-time time to go to point X...you arrive there a week later from the viewpoint of someone on the planet of point X as well. It evens out.
 
After reading this article: https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2023/10/24/five-star-trek-technologies-situations-ignore/

I was wondering what kind of in-universe occurrence would cause Starfleet to meet at a conference and issue a general order prohibiting the usage or possession (as the case may be) of certain technologies, or making contact with the mirror universe, a la General Order 7.

Aside from the "warp travel at high speeds damages space" thing, that is.
Time travel for sure. With all the difficulties and problems it causes, including those in TOS were time altered in such a way that the Federation doesn't exist, or possibly undoing major historical events.

It's way more problematic than it benefits. Establishing a moratorium and punishing all users is absolutely a reasonable step to make it stop.
 
After reading this article: https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2023/10/24/five-star-trek-technologies-situations-ignore/

I was wondering what kind of in-universe occurrence would cause Starfleet to meet at a conference and issue a general order prohibiting the usage or possession (as the case may be) of certain technologies, or making contact with the mirror universe, a la General Order 7.

Aside from the "warp travel at high speeds damages space" thing, that is.

1) Friendly AI eventually becomes a common place thing as we see in DISCO in the 31st century

2) StarFleet eventually does have some form of cloaking past the 24th century, and we know that future timelines tell of Romulans & Klingons eventually joining the UFP. So I think the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for StarFleet is that Cloak is only for StarFleet ships (Tactical reasons) and only used in times of combat / war. Otherwise, there is no logical reason to use it unless it's for surveillance of a enemy target. StarFleet doesn't just sneak into another species territory and start spying.

UFP & StarFleet will explore into as many territories as possible in a open & friendly way.

3) I think Time Travel will eventually become highly regulated, it's one of those things that DISCO was silly about. Banning Time Travel, well, how do you police others who would mess with your timeline if you don't have the tech? Exactly, you can't. So making it highly regulated and government controlled, not something the average person can use is critical. There are limits to what is allowed with time travel tech and it's usage. Like saving lives, preventing murders, atrocities, genocides, calamities etc. That's good usage of the technology.

4) Long Distance teleportation, with transporters using Subspace, the longer distance you have to travel, the higher probability that there is subspace interference from natural phenomena, random anomalies, StarShips creating subspace jamming, etc.
Also, beaming accuracy gets much harder the further you have with countless # of things flying around. Imagine trying to beam several light years and a StarShip warps by disrupting your signal, sending your transporter signal somewhere else other than the intended direction. Whoops, your transporter signal has now veered off to god knows where and hopefully they can deduce what direction it's being warped around to and get a starship in front and catch your signal.

Given how fast subspace signals travel, that becomes a highly (easily lost) signal issue and people are just gone.

And even in the JJ-verse where Khan disappeared to Chronos, in the novels, he had a elaborate plan to transwarp beam:
According to the novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness, beaming to Qo'noS for Khan was a more complicated plot. The small portable transwarp beaming device on the jumpship only had enough power to beam Khan to an automated cargo station on Earth's orbit. From there he accessed a heavy-load transporter to beam onto an unmanned vessel in orbit of Luna. Khan had equipped the ship with another unauthorized transwarp device wired into the empty ship’s engine. Utilizing the entire energy output of the engine for a single massive burst, he could have beamed anywhere in our galactic region. Transporting to Qo'noS completely burned out the device, so no one was able to follow him using it.
That sounds like ALOT of energy just to beam one person aboard, that's not energy efficient.
You might as well just warp a entire ship with alot of cargo & people to the destination.
Energy efficiency per Person or per kg does matter.

If you spent all that energy on one person, on one trip, that's highly energy inefficient.

There's a reason why most people fly on airlines, instead of small cessna style personal planes, it's FAR more energy efficient to mass transport a giant group of people than to individually fly small groups of people.

Transwarp beaming might not only be hazardous if your signal gets mangled in subspace, but the energy cost might not be justifiable compared to just moving a starship, all it's reasources, and all the people.

Using a different technology like Sikarian Spatial Trajector, even with it's limited range when used on a Borg Cube of a few light years would mean that is a better long range teleportation device since it took the "La Sirena" several days to travel from the Borg Cube Reclamation project to Nepenthe at max warp while evading their follower.

As for the Spore Drive, I've came up with limitations where it needs a Biological Navigator to Spore Jump far distances. And we saw limitations as our Entire Milky Way Galaxy is enclosed with the Galactic Barrier and the Spore Network ends several light years away from the edge of the Galactic Barrier, so any inter-Galaxy travel would require exiting the Mycelial Network, crossing the Galactic Barrier then hopping back into the Exterior Mycelial Network if there is one and travel to another Galaxy.
If said other Galaxy also has their own Galactic Barrier, cross that barrier the normal way, then potentially traverse the other galaxies Mycelial network. But that's alot of trust in the biological navigator to not spore jump into a star.

We saw the dangers of computerized Spore Jumping at long range, they nearly got themselves killed.

I can see the computer be useful / accurate & precise with spore jumping at a local tactical level of (1 light second) radius from where you were. That's good enough for combat, not really good enough for Long distance travel w/o a Biological Navigator that you have to raise and train. And not everybody would be good Biological Navigators.

You would need to get volunteers to train and take the genetic modifications (requiring a lifting of genetic engineering) and allow for a vast navigator training corp to control the Spore drive. You'd obviouly grade every navigator by SEP (Spherical Error of Probability) when Spore Jumping and you would assign Mycelial Navigators and their accuracy to ships that need them. They would be a high demand position.

5) The Mirror Universe is fun and I'm fine with Multi-Universe / Parallel Quantum Universes mixing around and having adventures in each others universe.

6) A better programmed ships computer with a bit of DATA-esque AI would be helpful, especially dealing with unauthorized entry (intruders) / leaving of personnel (deserters or escappees), dealing with enemy boarding parties, dealing with ship crisis, etc. That would make it much harder to invade a UFP StarBase / StarShip / Facility. But that makes away missions that much more dangerous since you wouldn't have a All monitoring AI backing you up to the same degree that it would have on the StarShip. But it would also create a far more dangerous scenario if the AI gets co-opted or taken over. They would have far more power over the crew, so it's a balancing game of how much power you allow the AI to have, and in what situations.
 
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